Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

INTRODUCTION • lxxinationalistic or revolutionist program. As the Abu Nidal Organizationhas separated itself from the mainstream Palestinian nationalistmovement, it has been transformed into a self-sustaining criminalorganization that sells its terrorist skills to various Arab and non-Arabregimes. Criminal organizations may also maintain their own in-houseterrorist capacity, as has been the case with the Colombian drug syndicates’proprietary death squads known as the Extraditables and MAS(Muerte a Secuestradores, “Death to Kidnappers”). Less insidiousexamples of entrepreneurial groups include ecological activists andanimal-rights activists who pursue a terrorist version of single-interestpolitics cutting across several national jurisdictions. One of the mostprominent examples of such a group that has embarked on a terroristcampaign is the Animal Liberation Front, which has carried out sabotageof private and public research facilities and harassment of animalresearchers in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.The category of entrepreneurial groups often contains groups that atan earlier stage in their history would have been more readily classifiedas revolutionary organizations. This can be explained often by suchgroups’ failure to achieve their original revolutionary goals coupledwith their members’ inability to separate themselves from the cohesiveidentity of the group, for which they have often sacrificed the primeyears of their lives and which has absorbed so much of their energiesand devotion. Such members also often have no alternative skills withwhich to pursue a nonterrorist livelihood, and so the group continues toexist by selling its services to various buyers.Identification of GoalsThere are three main types of goals, namely, regime maintenance,regime change, and seeking limited advantage(s). The generation of atypology from these two sets of characteristics, namely, types of actorand types of motivations, is illustrated in table I.1, along with specificexamples of each possible combination of actor type and motivation type.The types found in the upper left to lower right diagonal represent themost natural congruence of actor types with goal types. State actors havea primary interest in self-maintenance. The Tonton Macoutes of Haitiwere a state-sponsored repressive group. Revolutionary groups generallypursue a revolutionary agenda, while entrepreneurial groups will be primarilymotivated by goals other than maintaining or overthrowing state